June 11, 2009

Holocaust

As Michael Burleigh, a leading historian of the Third Reich, has pointed out in a commentary on Singer’s work, eliminating defectives in pre-Nazi Germany was exactly what opened the door to the Holocaust. In his book Confronting the Nazi Past, Burleigh writes, “Singer omits to mention that one of the essential elements of [Nazi] propaganda was the denial of personality to their victims.” He adds that Singer is “displaying remarkable naiveté” when he suggests that the choices that would have to be made in evaluating a prospective defective for elimination would be in trustworthy hands if doctors were in charge. Burleigh notes that the Nazi euthanasia program was led by scientists and psychiatrists, people drawn from the best-educated and most “civilized” ranks of a sophisticated secular medical class not too different from the academic class Singer himself belongs to.

June 12, 2009

At first I thought writing about the Holocaust was a foolish thing to attempt. There are thousands of books on the subject. They range from children's books to scholarly works. Whatever could be said about it has probably already been said by others, many of whom lived through it.

That said, it's a major event in the 20th century and anyone writing a blog about religion can't simply link to a wiki entry about Auschwitz and move on.

Right or wrong, here are my views.

Most of the Holocaust books deal with the event in isolation. The approach I would like to take is to look at the history of religious violence in Europe and tie it into the Holocaust. The Holocaust didn't materialize out of thin air.

Killing the othersModern Europe is one of the most secular places on the planet. The churches have gone from being at the center of life and power to tourist destinations. Of course it wasn't always that way. The Europeans have been killing Jews, other Christians and Muslims for more than a thousand years.

Two of the bloodiest periods were the Crusades (1096-1270) and an age of Religious Wars (1560-1715).

There were nine Crusaders. The stated objective was to retake the holy land for Christianity. However, the Crusaders didn't confine their zeal for killing to Muslims. They killed about ____ Cathers in southern France (the Catholic Church considered the Cathers heretics). They sacked the Eastern Orthodox city of Constantinople and of course they killed Jews. The Crusaders felt that it didn't make sense to go off and kill Muslims in the holy land while nonbelievers (Jews) remained in the country they were leaving.